Caught Stealing: Darren Aronofsky takes a fresh approach with a thrilling crime caper

Caught Stealing takes place in New York’s Lower East Side in 1998. It’s a milieu that Darren Aronofsky knows well, as this is where he made Pi (1998), the imaginative feature that kickstarted his directorial career. Since that attention-grabbing debut, Aronofsky’s path has taken some unpredictable turns. One the one hand, he has established himself a filmmaker with a proven track record for directing actors to Oscar contention in modestly budgeted star vehicles like The Wrestler (2008), Black Swan (2010) and The Whale (2022), but he’s also been prone to taking wild leftfield swings in films like The Fountain (2006) and Mother! (2017); pictures that seemed designed to alienate as many audience members as they intrigued. 

One consistent defining factor in Aronofsky’s work is that his films are rarely light-hearted affairs. His cinema has a heaviness about it, with his characters carrying a great deal of trauma and often facing an inescapable fate, which is why Caught Stealing feels like such a welcome gearshift. This may be a film packed with violent acts, but it’s styled as a piece of pure entertainment, a fast-paced caper that is rarely allowed to stand still long enough for a sombre mood to settle. 

That’s not to say Hank (Austin Butler) isn’t burdened by his own traumatic past. A once-promising baseball player, his life was shattered by a car crash that we revisit in visceral flashbacks, with a sweat-soaked Hank lurching awake from these nightmares. He now stagnates with a job in a dingy bar, spending his free time following his beloved New York Giants or drowning his sorrows with the booze he has stashed around his apartment, while his girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) grows frustrated with his inability to display some degree of maturity and responsibility. Hank is happy to take on the minor responsibility of cat-sitting for his punk neighbour Russ (Matt Smith), but no good deed goes unpunished in this cynical world, and soon an assortment of sadistic thugs is at Hank’s door, determined to locate the drug money that Russ has squirreled away somewhere.  

Adapted by author Charlie Huston from his own 2004 novel, Caught Stealing wastes no time setting in motion a plot that serves up a fresh twist, betrayal or murder every ten minutes, and as well as being a film set in 1998, it feels like a film that could have emerged in that Tarantino-influenced era. It feels reminiscent of Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) and Snatch (1998), but Aronofsky is a better filmmaker than Ritchie, being more considered in his direction and ensuring the action remains anchored in a real sense of character and place. Through his many collaborations with Aronofsky and Spike Lee, cinematographer Matthew Libatique has shown how adept he is at capturing the vibrancy and texture of New York City. In Caught Stealing, he and Aronofsky evoke a city in the process of being cleaned up – Mayor Giuliani’s draconian laws are referenced – but one where threats still lurk on every corner as an increasingly battered and beleaguered Hank races through the streets. Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1984) was surely a touchstone for these filmmakers; an association strengthened by the casting of Griffin Dunne as Hank’s dissolute boss. 

Aronofsky has always been a strong director of actors and the performances that he gets from his well-chosen cast add a layer of richness to this material. The magnetic Butler carries the film effortlessly, growing in authority as Hank resolves to face his fears and take control of his destiny, and he is supported by an ensemble that bring colour and personality to parts that could easily have been stock roles, like Regina King’s hard-nosed detective, or Nikita Kukushkin’s henchman, who snarls like a bulldog while displaying his limited grasp of “American” phrases. Best of all are Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio as a pair of Hasidic Jewish gangsters, who kvetch wearily in Yiddish and punctuate their search for the loot with a detour to celebrate Shabbos with their mother (a brief but welcome Carol Kane cameo). “Sad world, broken world” is a morose refrain that these two characters repeat through the film, and that might have been Aronofsky’s filmmaking credo to date. Caught Stealing is still a portrait of a sad and broken world – very few of these characters have happy endings in store – but the fresh approach he’s taken makes all the difference. It seems like Darren Aronofsky is finally having fun, and for a brisk 107 minutes, so are we. 

► Caught Stealing is in UK cinemas 29 August.